EFFECT OF BOLSHEVIKS' DEFEAT.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 January 1919, Page 5

EFFECT OF BOLSHEVIKS' DEFEAT.

TROTSKY MOVES TO NOVGOROD. RED GUARDS PUT TO FLIGHT,

Received Jan. 20, 5.45 p.m. London, Jan. 23. The Morning Post's Stockholm correspondent states that according to Helsingfors telegrams, Trotsky telegraphed to the War Minister as follows: "Owing to the last defeat on the northern front the whole army with a general deserted." Sixty thousand workmen at Petrograd have been on strike since the 16th inst. All supplies have been removed from the city, and Trotsky has removed his headquarters to Novgorod.

Tho Bolshevik Red Guards who invaded Karelia at Suojervi were beaten off, and &re now in full retreat, suffering from shortage of food. —Aus. N.Z. Cable Assoc.

Received Jan. 20, 5.45 p.m. Stockholm, Jan. 23.

Trotsky's statement in reference to the desertion of the wholo of the Bolshevik army refers to 60,000 men on the Narva front who have gone over to the Esthonians.

The evacuation of Petrograd was necessitated by the heavy Bolshevik defeat at Perm. —Aus. N.Z. Cable Assoc.

CHAOS AND BLOODSHED. MANY MURDERS DAILY. London, Dec. 30. The special correspondent of the Times, writing from Petrograd, says that Uie city is morally and physically ruined Numerous buildings have been boarded up and the streets are almost empty. Most cf the residents hold false passports, describing themselves as manual workers in order to safeguard themselves from arrest

The recent census divided the population into four classes, viz.:—Heavy workers, brain-workers, the lesser bourgeois, and the arch-bourgeois. The lastnamed is a most dangerous designation. Tho arch-bourgeois are steadily decreasing in number, and tneir executions methodically continue. The chief victims are army officers and people who are too poor to bribe their way to liberty A species of Jacobin court sits daily. The presiding judge is an obese Jewess, who, with oiled locks, lolls on the "bench surrounded by the Soviet crew, and condemns five or si;: persons to death daily Everywhere a reign of terror existsThe whole population stays hermetically at home, -but accusations by telephone are common. Speedy arrests follow, and letters are sent to wives containing the r.ingle sentence, "Consider yourself a widow "

Atheism is taught in the schools, and ikor.s are heavily taxed. Divorce is swl.eii in tcu minutes on the slightest pretext.

T-'.w.ky dominates more than Lenin He lives in luxury at the Kremlin fti, Moscow, and has n bodyguard of MOO Chinese troops and 70R) Letts. He journeys everywhere in tho former Tsar's tvnin with regal magnificence, accompanied by numerous troops, with the pcuines !jiid the rear carriages mounting artillery and machine-guns Trofskv ii busy organising an army against the expected Allied expedition, lie has 200,000 fair/ reliable men, commanded by Barsky, formerly a general of "i« Russian army, who receives the t!r. huge salary of £IOO daily l iij munitions factories have been resisrtsd, and Trotsky hopes to have art

i.r.ay of 1,000,000 by the spring 'C'otskv, Lenin, and Seinovieff are perpetually expecting the Allies to attack. They carry false passports for use in th* r.vent of disaster But Trotsky belisvt's that an attack is the best defence. ir\u k, therefore invading Poland and I.iMi'wniii. He expects to be able by the spring to hold Pctrograd against any attacks

Tluscian officers maintain that Nicho--Ins and his family are still alive in a northern neutral country

"'.'.'he great evils I have related," tho err-impendent says, "pale before the and/tho tortures, which aw regularly applied in the gaols throughcju; Russia, in pursuance of Trotsky's ic.-.-vising policy

"A nephew of a former Fuissian Ambassador, ]n=h fugitives, and others, give sickening details of men dismembered alive, o! officers branded with redhot irons on tlie naked shoulders, hung on tic-es head downwards and flayed alive.

"Prisoners wero also confined in cellars which were slowlv flooded

,; A party of officers were caught at Volhynin, trying to reath Poland They were stripped, their tetth were broken with hammers, their tongues. were torn tWsncw'*